Jill Scott took two and a half years to follow her 2004
Beautifully Human with January's Collaborations. Eight
months later, the true sequel suggests that all those duets weren't
just to help her writing. Scott's new album traces the arc of a
relationship whose dissolution slows her down midway through -- until
Track Thirteen. There, a new fella shows up to cure her "Celibacy
Blues," touching off the whispered, honeyed "All I," a lesson for any
horndog naive enough to believe that toned babes make better sex
kittens. As with so many new R&B heroes, Scott's music is more
about groove and mood than song. But more than Maxwell or D'Angelo,
she cares about words, and no matter how poetically she muses, tracks
like the turf-claiming "Real Thing," the erotic "Crown Royal," the
distressed "Insomnia" and the inspired "Breathe" always situate her in
space and time.